Peer review—the process of engaging students in providing feedback on each other’s work—is one of the most productive practices for courses that integrate any form of writing. While receiving useful feedback from their peers, students discover how others approach writing tasks. In doing so, students learn how to give, receive, and integrate feedback—skills that are… Read more »
Assessment
What Will You Keep This Fall? Susan Siena on More Frequent Tests
In my last video in this series, Dr. Susan Siena from the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs talks with me about moving from a few higher-stakes exams to more frequent, lower-stakes ones. Susan has evidence that students see better connections between exams and the course content, due to the more immediate assessments, and… Read more »
What Will You Keep for Fall? Sapna Mehta on Alternative Assessments
In this episode of WWYK, I talk with Dr. Sapna Mehta from the Department of Biology, and she shares how she has transformed an upper-level class in two ways—by taking a hybrid approach and by replacing all her exams with weekly scaffolded exercises that lead to a final project. That final project is also one… Read more »
What Will You Keep This Fall? Laura Brown on Low-Stakes Assessments
In this week’s “What Will You Keep this Fall?” video, we are talking with Dr. Laura Brown from the Chemistry Department about a few lessons she’s learned from this past year, and specifically about her use of low-stakes assessments. She has incorporated Quick Checks in each module, allows students to re-do parts of exams, and… Read more »
Trust without Monitoring in Large Classes
During our move to remote learning during COVID, many instructors are struggling with how to assess students online while maintaining academic integrity. For many instructors, that has led to the use of online proctoring tools like Respondus Monitor or Examity. These technologies, however, rely on a surveillance model that presents a variety of challenges for… Read more »
Assessing Student Learning in the Online, Synchronous Classroom
If you’re accustomed to teaching in-person, I’m sure hybrid or online teaching has required some changes to your lessons. At first glance, the modalities of synchronous online classrooms and in-person classrooms may seem at odds. However, many types of assessments (e.g., exams, essays, quizzes, discussions) can be used for both synchronous online and face-to-face (f2f)… Read more »